Some Indians finding it tough to repatriate

In recent years,Mother India has welcomed back tens of thousands of former emigrants and their offspring.

In recent years,Mother India has welcomed back tens of thousands of former emigrants and their offspring. When he visited the US this week,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally extended an invitation to all Indian-Americans and nonresident Indians who wish to return home. But many Indians who spent most of their lives in North America and Europe are finding they cant go home again.

About 100,000 returnees will move from the US to India in the next five years,estimates Vivek Wadhwa,a research associate at Harvard University who has studied the topic. These repats,as they are known,are drawn by Indias booming economic growth,the chance to wrestle with complex problems and the opportunity to learn more about their heritage. They are joining multinational companies,starting new businesses and even becoming part of Indias sleepy government bureaucracy.

But a study by Wadhwa and other academics found that 34 percent of repats found it difficult to return to India compared to just 13 percent of Indian immigrants who found it difficult to settle in the US The repats complained about traffic,lack of infrastructure,bureaucracy and pollution.

For many returnees the cultural ties and chance to do good that drew them back are overshadowed by workplace cultures that feel unexpectedly foreign,and can be frustrating. Sometimes returnees discover that they share more in their attitudes and perspectives with other Americans or with the British than with other Indians. Some stay just a few months,some return to the West after a few years.

Returnees run into trouble when they look Indian but think American. People expect them to know the country because of how they look,but they may not be familiar with the way things run. Similarly,when things dont operate the way they do in the United States or Britain,the repats sometimes complain.